St. Helena Rep. Mike Thompson, a gun owner and hunter, has been tapped to lead a House task force that will examine what Congress can do to stop gun violence, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said Wednesday.

The selection of Thompson, a moderate Democrat and member of the Blue Dog Coalition, signifies that Democrats need to attract some level of Republican support for any gun control law they hope to pass in the GOP-controlled House.

"He is a Vietnam veteran and an avid hunter, and he is ideally suited to lead this effort, working with the administration and in a bipartisan way, to ban assault weapons and assault magazines," Pelosi said in a statement.

The move came as President Obama announced an interagency task force that will be led by Vice President Joe Biden and said he expects the panel to come up with recommendations "no later than January."

Thompson said he supports the Second Amendment but that Congress needs to respond to the shooting rampage last week that killed 20 children and six employees at a school in Newtown, Conn.

In an interview, he said he plans to hold talks with Republicans and Democrats alike and advocacy groups from all sides of the debate. "I don't think it's a partisan issue," he said. "I don't think those little kids in Connecticut were partisan."

Favors assault-gun ban

Thompson owns a number of guns and carried an assault weapon when he served in Vietnam, but said he is in favor of an assault weapons ban.

"As a gun owner, I think they put a cloud over the head over all gun owners," he said.

Thompson not only serves as a conduit to Republicans on gun issues, but is someone who can also help Democrats coalesce around specific proposals, analysts said.

"He's someone who serves for the White House as an important bridge between different factions of the Democratic Party," said David McCuan, a professor of political science at Sonoma State University.

Thompson's appointment shows that Democrats are serious about making a legislative push right now because someone like him has the best chance to connect with Republicans on the issue, said Robert Benedetti, a political scientist at the University of the Pacific.

Democrats, including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, have been rallying around renewing a federal assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. But other legislative options that may be more politically palatable include strengthening the background checks required to buy a gun and limiting the number of rounds in a magazine clip.

Mental health access

At the White House Wednesday, Obama said, "This time the words need to lead to action.

"There's no law or set of laws that can prevent every senseless act of violence in our society," he said. "We're going to need to work on making access to mental health care at least as easy as access to a gun. We're going to need to look more closely at a culture that all too often glorifies guns and violence."

But Brandon Combs, the executive director of the Calguns Foundation, a gun rights group, said he was concerned about Thompson's statements and that he opposed the assault weapons ban and limits on magazine clips.

"What we're really doing is talking about limiting peaceful, law-abiding people," he said of stricter regulations. "The emotional response and the typical political response is a knee-jerk response to ban guns. That's proven time and time again ineffective to stop these kinds of attacks."

Also on Wednesday, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., introduced two bills, one that would increase funding for school security and another that would enable the federal government to reimburse states that use the National Guard to protect schools.